Unforgettable

I was still cobbling together a routine of sorts with my son. There was a prevailing tentativeness but a parcel of energy to throw into everything, no matter how unfamiliar it was. I tried to introduce my son to penny hockey and managed to hold his attention for while with that. When he expressed an interest in drawing of all things -- I have long joked at my own expense about being the only father who would pressure his son to go to art school and he further entrenched the joke by demonstrating his preference for the sciences and math -- I went along with it and supplied him with the sharpie, paper and how-to videos from YouTube (which may have been the main draw). He did express his frustration with his ability compared to that demonstrated in the video, and i assured him that practice and taking it slow would bring him along with time.

Our camp-out life on the floor was proving to be decent for the first few hours. He got a little fussy about attending his Saturday afternoon music class and after the time to get to class had come and gone, we decided to head out for a while. It was a snowy afternoon, but we still went to the playground. He played on the swings for a while but before long we decided to venture inside in quest for a hot chocolate. He found the one we purchased not to his liking despite my efforts to take the edge off the bitterness with water and milk. We deposited his hot chocolate in the garbage and headed out.

"Can we go in there?"

Don't do it, don't, you know better, you're gonna pay for it, no, don't, watch it. You've been to this movie.

He doesn't have anything to play with.

"Okay."

So we headed into a toy store for a browse. We went through the story and we were fascinated with the items that were in there. There were the futile turns down the aisles such as when he was perusing the toys for 12 month-olds and my own wistfulness at a Lawren Harris jigsaw puzzle. We scanned carefully, exhaustively actually and my son proposed that he come up with three options for me to choose from. I pointed out a STEM themed toy for him to put together various items and sensors that he could use to trigger alarms and such.  Agreed. Settled. Finito. Our conversation overheard, the manager of the store gave a knowing look and a slight nod. A prickle of stigma and empathy touched my back and I tried to shrug it away.

At the cashier's counter, there was a resplendence of other toys, smaller items to mess around with and get familiar with. Most were novelty items. Coinbanks that absorbed their coins in certain ways, little machine and suctioned toys that danced and popped and sprung with surprise. And a cube. The cube held the cashier in its thrall as he played with it to idle away his own time moreso than give it the sell.

STEM kit bagged, my son fell for this item and had to have it. The slide to despairing desire was quick, precipitous and I had to carry him out of the store to keep the reaction from spilling into embarrassment with a captive audience. I managed to get him to stay with me for half a block until we had to stop. I sat down on the ledge of a low window and tried to look him in the eye. He was sobbing with rage at the possibility that he would never see the cube again though it was etched deeply in me already that it meant a great deal to him. I was conscious of giving in, of trying to extract a promise of future behaviour when I knew how those deals had rarely, if ever, worked out.

No matter what I tried to say to assure him that Santa was on it, that he was looking down and noting this, my son hung on to the same question, "What if he forgets?" The questions was pressed with variety as it would apply to every person I could come up with who would remember. His mother, my best friend, Santa (again), friends who knew of my prodigious capacity for recall, there was the risk that this gift or his desire for it or, essentially, he would be forgotten. A word alone would not ease this, least of all mine on this occasion. We were stuck in this loop for about 45 minutes, perhaps a full hour as I surveyed the sympathetic looks of passers-by who had their own backstory for what I hoped was playing out more privately than it was.

I ran out of strategies to ease his mind about being forgotten and tried to bring him back to the calm that had been absent since he saw the toy and fixated on it. I did not want to assuage him with this toy. I did not want to set the precedent, but on this day, perhaps it was the only option I had. I hated the thought of giving in or bribing or inching toward the habits of the weekend dad. During a moment of calm, actually to negotiate a moment of calm I told him that he had to promise me to remember something.

He he took a deep breath and I tried to make it clear to him that time together and connecting were more important. I did not try to cite the fun we had in the morning drawing and playing penny hockey but tried to give him the sense that this was an opportunity for him to have something to remember how important he was to me and that he carry it with him as a token of my remembrance and my attention no matter where he is. Has a precedent been set? Quite possibly, and the questions will remain for a while about the strength of memory, the value of presence and wounds that a parent can inflict with any decision or action.

The Inevitable F-Bomb

Like hopscotch, tag, rhyming taunts and other fodder of the recess break, the F-bomb gets passed down from one generation to the next. Now that I think of it, I suspect the F-bomb has the most certain path from fourth grader to kindergartener for the generations to come.

In my own case, familiar with the stories of the rite of passage that is the first uttered F-bomb, I braced myself for it. I knew that once he knew the word the genie would be out of the bottle and it would be futile to wag my finger with the insistence that he never say the word again. As I envisioned it, I would hear about it secondhand from a teacher or other adult or catch him mid-utterance and petrify him with a tap on the shoulder and a, "Pardon me?"

Instead, my son caught me completely off guard over the Sunday morning French toast. The morning chatter was going where it was and he looked up at me and asked, "Are you going to say 'f--king'?" I've never uttered it in front of him. I've managed to channel my rage to "goofing" when he has me at my wit's end and this morning, I was nowhere in the vicinity of that near-apoplexy.

And damnit, (excuse me), didn't he actually find a way to use it in a manner that managed to retain some of his innocence rather than smear it with a comment like, "Yes I know what it means!! I said it because he was f--king pi--ing me off!!"

OOOOkay.

I was left laughing at the question and the way it was posed. I still managed to make the key points that I needed to make about the word. I pointed out that neither his mother nor I use it in front of him and went through a long roster of adults in his circle who don't use it. Having confirmed that he was not sure what the word meant -- one talk at a time, please -- I advised him on the risks of using words that he didn't know the meaning of and let me know that on the playground those risks could include an unwelcome punch or worse. Still, I struggled both not to laugh and not to go too over the top in my reaction. There's every chance I did both and found an odd balance in that. I made it clear, though, that I didn't want to hear it and that it was a word that could hurt. I reminded him of his sadness a few days earlier when a friend told him he hated him and added that this word could hurt just as much.

The occasion will be filed in my memories of French toast from now on and we will see what will come of his new familiarity with this mysterious, powerful word.

Will the floodgates open and will we find the F-bomb flying regularly? I'll admit I was tempted to tell him to "Use a f--king towel," (but didn't) when he was flinging his hands dry after washing them, but I managed to restrain myself despite the inadequacy of "goofing" as an adjective.

And, no, I won't be taking him to Deadpool now.

Once More? (please...)

He's a substantial size for his age. At six, he probably weighs as much as I did when I was 10 or 11 and for months now I note that the Big Wheels that were all the rage during my suburban youth had a weight limit of 65 pounds, which my son is just three pounds shy of. If he asked me for one, I'd have to decline and rather than try to explain the math I'd have to tell him he's too big. In a wiser moment, I might have the clues to tell him, "We'll see," rather than issue anything definitive.

Tonight, though, he's disconsolate and its an hour past his bedtime. He got his first fidget spinner and after a little over an hour, he set it down of a crowded playground to spare himself the risk of it falling out of his pocket to never be found again. As trendy toys are wont to do, it disappeared. He scoured the playground again and again, his fatigue and emotions conspiring to drag him into an abyss that nothing could console. He retraced his steps and reviewed the possible locations where he may have left it, his calm holding together but giving away to the loss of the toy and perhaps even the disappointing realization that, in this world, fidget spinners disappear when they are given the chance.

I was quietly miffed at the obsession delaying the bedtime we had already compromised on, but I participated in the search and kept my cool. When the search was finally abandoned we start back for the car.  Gabriel a few steps ahead of me, but his feet were leaden with the loss.

"C'mere."

He stopped and turned. I extended my arms to give him a hug.

"I'm proud of how you're keeping calm right now, but I know how sad you are. It's okay to cry."

He did.

"Want a ride?"

He nodded and turned his back to me and after one failed attempt at the hoist, (which was less comedic than I would have liked) I got him onto my shoulders. There was a time when I could not get his legs far enough down my chest to feel he had his weight where it ought to be. He was once too top-heavy and I had to pull on his legs to keep him from falling backward of his perch. This time, the weight pressed on my back and neck.

I moved slowly as a few of his tears drizzled onto my forehead. The weight told me, "This isn't going to happen too many more times."

"Really?", I thought.

"Really, really."

I put him in charge of navigation as we crossed streets. He kept his eyes on traffic and gave me the required warnings about the oncoming traffic to keep us out of harm's way. We talked along the way while he lost himself in the sensation of the 5-days' growth of hair on my bald head against his palms and fingertips. I told him about "easy come, easy go." I didn't give him the acidic take on it, but reminded him of the things that he has worked hard for and hung onto. I let him know that everybody else wanted that fidget spinner just as badly as he did, even though few to none of them had to wait as long as he did for his one treasured hour of owning one.

I didn't make any promises, but I'm sure the next fidget spinner will not require as long a wait as today's.

His next fidget spinner will, for me, mark the walk with him on my shoulders tonight. An occasion which will be one of the very last few where I not only carry him, but perhaps ease the brunt of loss as well. I will have to walk next to him while his feet are weigh the the gravity of sadness and loss of will. I'm not sure if I can ease future pains as easily as I could tonight, but if that is the case, I anticipate that the pain will double on those occasions.

Parental Guidance: With Authority or Upon Reflection?

I happened to read a pair of books, back-to-back, that provide a remarkable contrast to one another in their efforts to contribute to a conversation or the conversation about parenting. The first was a book by a father who wrote from a religious perspective. I bristled at first at the religious elements of the book, but decided to read the book anyway. It was short enough, there was no telling how strong a religious tone it would take and I was confident that I would get something out of the book. That was indeed the case. The complementary book of the two was Sue Klebold's A Mother's Reckoning -- a distinguished, moving and powerful book that will have a lasting impact on me.

Klebold, if the name rings a bell more faintly than you feel it should, is the mother of Dylan Klebold, one of the two young men who instigated the tragedy at Columbine High School in 1999. Her book is a detailed account of her efforts to come to terms with her son's actions, and her absolute bewilderment at not knowing that her son was preparing to do what he did as his last days of high school counted down. It has been easy over the years for outsiders to accuse Klebold and her husband, suburban affluence, adolescent disillusionment and the absence of gun control as factors in the tragedy at Columbine and I would count myself among those who opted for those simplicities in interpreting (and shelving) its meaning. The reality of Columbine, so many other tragedies of that nature and, to be honest, everyone of our lives, is that there are secrets that we all keep and ought find a safe ear to share them with in order to connect with one another and be the people that we have the potential to be if those secrets remain tightly wrapped in pride.

A Mother's Reckoning, however, poses a cathartic and detailed counterargument. It is not, by any means an attempt to recast her role in the tragedy. She does a great deal of very open and wrenching soul-searching as she tries to come to terms with the moments that she wishes she could have back and her wishes that she could have influenced the course of events in anyway that she could, right down to the possibility of not marrying her husband. She loves her son, still does. She aches for the losses that she has contributed to are palpable and her efforts to sort through her relationships with her son and examination of the family she has had are brave, open efforts to shed light on something that is baffling in so many ways.

If I were to look at the entire range of my feelings, flaws and interactions with my son with the intensity and critical acuity that Klebold has looked at this moment of her life and everything that lead to it, I would be a much wiser, more informed and compassionate father. While not a parenting book in the sense that the other I book I read was, it will have a much deeper impact on me.

At this point, I am inclined to grant the other book anonymity. It is very much a by-the-numbers book about parenting. The author, a father of five, is quite confident in his approach to parenting and he boils it down to a set of points, each illustrated with a pithy chapter that features an amusing anecdote about something he did right or something another parent did that he disapproves of. The religious forays were relatively infrequent but did make me bristle at times with other aspects of his view of ideal parenting. On more than one occasion, there were suggestions that there were financial means to good parenting or the building of strong memories. On another occasion he excoriates a father he never met for golfing on the weekend and says that all fathers should quit golf. He steps back slightly from this position and he does eventually acknowledge that there are circumstances where golf is not something that fathers ought to quit and fess up that he does not know the father he skewers, but he continually favours making his points, and others, in simplistic terms.

As the religious orientation of the other parenting book emerged -- at first in passages quoted from the Bible that mix easily with adages from Garrison Keillor and other secular voices, but beyond to passages describing the Devil as a tangible figure who is celebrated at Halloween -- the shift from pithy and insightful toward fear-based and narrow-minded made me weary of the confident certitude that the author worked from. The checklist that the author -- as other authors of parenting do's and don't's -- created ultimately lacked a depth or flexibility that would come from the advice that is found in Klebold's book. Whether a book of 10, 40 or 100 "tips," such books leave substantial gaps and perhaps give a parent a sense of inadequacy because they did not do the 63rd item from a checklist or that they forgot much about a book that was actually quite forgettable to begin with.

While those checklists would find their way to the discard bins with some speed, Klebold's book, even as a mere talisman on my shelf, would be a reminder of the need for compassion, patience, sensitivity and intuitiveness that ought to guide a parent through each moment of this vocation.

The Right Run

Competitive sports have been something I have done my best to keep my son way from to this point. He is going to be six in a few weeks and I have so far avoided the drumbeat to enrol him in hockey or any of the team sports that tend to bring out the competitive instincts of parents who have their own aspirations or agenda. He has been told a few times that he is not going to be playing football regardless of how big he gets.

To this point, he has been relatively active with gymnastics and swimming thus far and we may be at a crossroads with the gymnastics. His most recent round of gymnastics is in the late afternoons which has seen his class relegated to a corner of the gym that affords the older and more competitive kids access to much of the equipment that was the highlight during previous sessions.

Running continues to appeal and there have been more and more opportunities for him to sign up for races. He wants to race me whenever we are walking somewhere and his enthusiasm for it remains unbridled. Today, he had a 2K race and on a bracing, subzero morning he toed the line with about 30 other kids. Before the race, I cautioned him to go out slowly, take his time and save his energy for the second half of the race.

In the 1K race he had last month, he finished in just under 6 minutes, but I was not sure what to expect with double the distance. For an experienced runner, grasping the challenges with pacing, with saving a little energy, whether to compete with the people around or simply with yourself are all hard things to take into account.

As the kids start to cross the finish line and the minutes ticked away, I wondered how he was doing out there with the extra distance and whatever concerns I had eased when he crossed the line in tandem with a new friend and did a high five as the other boy's mother and I looked on. They fell into step together and spent the race getting acquainted with one another and by the time they crossed the line, they were a team. We parted ways probably too quickly, but I was not immediately aware how well Gabriel bonded with this other boy. As he talked about how he told his running partner about himself and his family and learned the same from him, I thought about how I bonded with fellow runners during my favorite races and how, whether we spoke a great deal or not, we shared the run in several ways and got to know each other and cheer each other on as we pursued our goals.

I am fully aware that as Gabriel gets older, sports will pose dilemmas as we weigh the difference between competing and participating. It is still too early for that and there is the simple matter of him finding sports that he is passionate about. If running happens to be the sport, then he has had a good head start and gymnastics will be helpful in developing the balance and physical awareness required for other sports. I am conscious of the blight of the participant medal and hope that he learns the lessons that come with competing but I hope that those lessons are learned in areas or endeavours where he is striving to do his best and find the personal achievement or growth that he seeks rather than in sports where he is less interested. 

In the meantime, I will cross my fingers that he runs into his new teammate the next time he lines up for a race.

The Walk Home Evolves

From https://www.emuparadise.me/

Before getting into this post, a quick anecdote from a few days ago.

Our heat has been off in our condo as the boiler is being replaced. With the temperatures closer to freezing than we would like there is a little more bundling up.  A few nights back we asked our son if he wanted pyjamas with feet or without feet.

"Yes!", he replied.

We asked again and again -- I could inflate this to 7 repetitions of the question -- and each time he replied, "Yes."

Finally I said, "You know, if you can't answer an A or B question, we might have to hold you back a year."

His response, which I admit I clearly had coming: "You already did!!"

He's 5 now.  Going on 15 in November.

Despite the lad being in school now and rounding out his truncated days in kindergarten ("Oh, when I was a boy...") with sessions at Out of School Care (OOSC), I still have the opportunity to walk him home.

The changes may have been gradual but they are significant and noticeable at this point.  Our walks on the pedestrian overpass that straddles 14th Street are far more amusing now as he essentially turns it into his version of the old video game Frogger.  He pauses strategically before racing over each lane of traffic to avoid getting exploded.  I'm slower to catch on but he assured me on Monday that even though I got exploded I still had two lives left.  (Obviously he is getting exposed to video games somewhere.)  Today he added a variation to the game by telling me that the northbound cars were marshmallows and the southbound bombs. Or was that the southbound were marshmallows.  The strategy has changed and he is less likely to adopt the full on sprint across the overpass to smash himself into the chainlink fence on the other side of the bridge.  He has not, however, developed a clear scoring system.

The conversation has opened up a little more. He still tends to give accounts of the people who contributed to the scrapes and cuts on his knees. This month, however, the stories have been of real conflict over sharing or not sharing and I have taken the opportunity to share with him my simmering observation that one of the hardest things to decide is whether it is better to be patient and tolerate a situation or to impose your will on someone and make them concede to you.  At his age the second scenario may result in a fight, though there may be a chance that will or personality can assert some influence as well.  I told him my tendency has been to be patient, though I have wondered from time to time if that was the best strategy.  Despite my doubts, I told him that I preferred that he be patient and try to talk things through -- the third way that I have yet to get full command of.

A chance encounter with his uncle on our way home today also gave me the opportunity to talk about walking.  His uncle is involved in a conference on walkability here in Calgary this week and after we had a brief chat about the conference, my son and I continued home talking about how much we walk.  I did not bother to trouble him with kids who have to be bussed to school and just reminded him of entire weekends we have gone without using the car.  I pointed out the advantages for his health and safety when there are fewer cars or more time spent walking.  Today, though, I could have added that it is a good opportunity to clear your head at the end of the day.

Again, Again

Music will likely be one of the things that Gabriel and I will always bond over. I know I ought to chase that comic voice bubble out of the frame as I suspect there is a every likelihood the two of us will butt heads in the years ahead as our tastes diverge or his indifference to his guitar gains a critical mass, but when adolescence passes we should be able to pick up the conversation again from when or wherever we leave off. Unlike the Kinsellas in Field of Dreams, we will be more likely to sit down near the stereo or with our guitars than pick up baseball gloves.

Tonight was one of those nights where a song and a musician provided a span of the bridge that will take us through that still-distant stretch of adolescence to whatever conversation there will be when we sit down to share music on the other side.

After nearly a year of listening to an emerging pop-folk master named Paul Johnson, who commercially plies is craftsmanship under the guise of Canyon City, Gabriel was asking to hear, "The one that starts, 'I woke before the sun rose...'" during his bath and asked for it again as I turned him in for the night.  As we went on to listen to said song, titled "Needles and Pins," eleven to twelve times in a row until his breathing finally eased into the rhythm that portended sleep we talked and talked - the lad not merely stalling sleep, but asking questions that would not come from anywhere else.

"What is grace?" and, in response to my attempt to capture it for a 5-year-old, "What is a virtue?"

We lay in the dark exchanging favorite passages of the song. He, the chorus, with its fairy tale mention of plastic crowns and the certainty about where home is; me the more adult world evocations about "wear(ing) a tie to go to work and tell(ing)... lies like everything's okay" and "los(ing) some keys in the dust." With each repetition of the song in the dark, Gabriel's questions continued about the song, the individual words that emerged and caught his ear more easily with each listening and I'm sure there were unasked questions planted there to bloom later about music, craft, poetry and love that he will ask when he has the words in the weeks and years ahead.

I have every confidence that Mr. Johnson/Canyon City will have a wonderful career ahead of him as songs such as "Needles and Pins" continue to find their path to ears and hearts in the days ahead.  If it has not happened already, he will nightly have audience members who will tell him that he wrote their song, whether it is the one they make love to, danced for the first time as husband and wife or any other milestone in life of someone following their romantic path to one-and-onlys that he describes so aptly in song and song again.  In about ten years or so, there will also be a 60-year-old man with his 15-year-old son -- the lad possibly doing a great job of portraying adolescent indifference to anything the old man springs on him or indulging in some patience with me for the night -- and, with a wink, I'll simply say that I used his first album to lull that lad asleep not so long ago.

Thanks Paul.

On Kindergarten Eve

As I write this post, I am contemplating the browser tab for the Google search, "inspecting for lice" and wondering whether I should bookmark it or just leave it open.  I had to do a search last night after a flurry of text messages and a phone call from friends we camped with over the weekend, and it made for a little baptism for mother and father heading into the heart of September.  The flashlight inspection last night, the lack of even a single scratch of the scalp and a good hair wash tonight provide some reassurance that we are all clear.

We hope.

The lad heads on the next stage of the journey tomorrow. Kindergarten is a little more than 13 hours away and I pause to look in all directions.  He will be headed to an old sandstone building still older than the one I started school in in days of yore.  It is not the red clapboard single room school of one stereotype but the creak of the wood floors, the wide-yet-cluttered hallways and tall windows give a sense that this is a school that gives some comforting associations with the word.  With the school being only 400 metres away, there is the chance to see him build some independence in the weeks and months ahead as well.

Today, it was a challenge to give the sense of significance that was appropriate for the occasion of starting school. An afternoon at a trampoline centre, an early bath and a bit of a speech from the old guy (that's me!) was part of the effort to make something of the day, but it is more of a transition for mom and dad than it is for him. New friends, new expectations and perhaps the threat of a little less play than has been the case, but it may be hard for him to identify significant differences between elementary school and day care. There will be lots of new kids and a lot of bigger ones too, but other than that there will be little to overwhelm the boy who so calmly transitioned into day care 30 pounds and 18 inches ago.

There are some questions about how we prepared him, but I try to tell myself that would be the case with any parent. He has an undeniable knack for math and sciences, a mild indifference to art, drawing, and... ahem... printing.  I look ahead to the partnership with his teachers in the years ahead to help us set goals for him and I anticipate the challenges we will all face with some degree of excitement.  I can picture him sitting down at the kitchen table - not necessarily tomorrow night - working on the things that he is struggling with where I can bring something to his growth, but I will dread -- just as I did during junior high school -- the Science Fairs that loom.

Apart from the scholastic aptitudes that are yet to be measured more precisely, there is the boy that we are sending off into the world.  He is an affectionate boy who can be a goofball and enjoys the role of the clown.  There are moments when he can withdraw when he is not getting his way, but there is a chance that he is more sensitive to the needs of others when he is in a big room. From day one we have been conscious of his size.  I recall seeing other newborns when he was just two or three weeks old and gaping at my wife with the question, "Was he ever that small?" We are more than a little anxious about how the expectations and perceptions of him are altered because of his size and while we may have done him an advantage academically by waiting an extra year before sending him on to kindergarten, there may be greater expectations of him as he towers over the other kids in his class.

Ultimately though, he is a prodigious hugger and (if they allow that in school) I think he is the kind of kid that can help bring together a room of kids.  We that thought and the insistence that we want, above all, for him to be a good, kind sensitive boy and man, we send him into the world.

Owning Up

Our Saturday morning rituals truncated for the summer, we have foregone the music lessons until the fall, but we still squeeze in our lunch pizzas with my cronies and yesterday, one of the less regular attendees in the circle asked Gabriel if he had a piggy bank and after a confirming nod, handed over a toonie.

Prior to that, my inquiry about whether Gabriel was ready to get on the train was met with some excitement, even if it did not entail a stop for a snack at Starbucks. The view of the city from the train still holds its command over Gabriel, and of course, there is a bit of local colour or grit on the train that he does not encounter from a backseat of the car.

When we arrived on the platform and he punched our ticket for the ride, Gabriel gravitated toward a boy who was a year older but happened to be playing with an Optimus Prime Transformer toy and wearing a baseball cap, just like Gabriel - check, check.  The two of them fell into easy conversation and when that happens as spontaneously as it does, about ten minutes passed before they got around to exchanging names.  When we boarded the train, they sat together.  The boy's father had little in common with me other than the boys and the proximity of their ages.  He was dressed in colours that seemed dark and muted by neglect or disregard. He had a large tattoo that covered most of his left bicep and for the moment preoccupied himself with his cellphone, something I am not above but wasn't doing this time around as Gabriel was inviting me to explain my affection for the long-gone Montreal Expos as we walked to the station.

As the train headed downtown, Gabriel and the boy continued their conversation and as it unfolded, the boy felt the need to raise the point that the police had taken his Dad's car for no apparent reason. The father in measured, resigned tones indicated that the car was taken because he had a suspended license. There was not a moment of disrespect for authority or the suggestion that he was hard-done-by or deserved or needed a break or express anything to indicate that anyone else was to blame.  My respect for the man was moved to the level he deserved and for the moment I discarded the narrative I was writing about a weekend father putting the time in.  He was setting a great example for his son and for myself.  It is easy to forget the importance of setting an example, especially when it comes to responsibility.

So the next time there is an opportunity to avoid taking myself down a notch in my son's estimation of me, I will remind myself of this man and father who acknowledged reality rather than trying to revise it to suit me in the short term.

The Curse of Imitation

It happened.  It may have actually happened in countless other ways that I have been able to discount with varying degrees of denial.  My sighs of exasperation are not quite that dramatic; he probably picked it up at daycare from a kid who picked it up from his or her folks.  The eye roll? Okay, that might have been me, but I usually turn away and lift my head to the heavens.  Still safe.  The running? Yeah, that's me.  The resistance to sleep? Nature, not nurture, so I shrug off that genetic hand-off with some resignation.

But this one, I could not deny. The Dude was playing with friends at his grandparents' neighbours two Sundays back.  I was there as well, providing some vigilance to relieve the neighbour the burden of tending to my son in addition to her own two sons. We were chatting about kids, summer travel plans and such when Gabriel let out an impatient yell that immediately clanged on my conscience.  That was me, clearly something he picked up from me and my go-to move when patience has worn thin or frankly I'm too lazy for a mindful, calmer approach.  I immediately (and calmly and gently, I can add) called him over.  I was not preoccupied with appearances and what this younger mother might think. 

Gabriel sat on my knee thoughtfully and was prepared to listen.  There was something about his surrender or openness at that moment that reminded me of a heart-to-heart we had a few weeks before. We sat on the sofa and in the course of the conversation I assured him that I would always be looking out for him and that making sure he was happy and safe.  In response he replied, "I never knew that," and there was a sense that it was a genre of father-son conversation that we would be able to have regularly and that there was an honest give and take.

This time around though, I spoke straight up about how he was picking up a bad habit from me - the yell.  I told him that it was something I learned and that I was trying to unlearn it and that I needed him to unlearn it before it became a habit.  I have been conscious of my tendency for a long time and when I catch myself, I can manage to alter my tone or volume after a tumultuous start to make a change that only a sensitive ear like that of a novelist or a child can pick up on.  On this occasion, though, with him on my knee and quiet with a sense of the moment, but it his guilt or mine.  Perhaps in his case, there was the realization that the yelling thing did not render any benefits.  For that moment, I had the feeling that I was getting through to him and making a pact that the two of us could hold each other to.  

I did not give him much opportunity to speak on this occasion and I did not ask him to apologize to his friends.  If anything I should have apologized to them, but there was enough self-flagellation for the moment without puzzling two pre-schoolers with this bout of self-awareness.

For the past ten days I've managed to rein in the volume and find that extra bit of patience when I'm being tested.  There was even a little revelation from Alice Munro's The View From Castle Rock where she talked about a relationship between parent and son that underlined the fact that being overprotective of your child (guilty as charged) ultimately prompts the kid to test your limits rather than his own and come to some discovery of self-regulation as limits are tested independently.  (If that revelation has reached all of her readers, she deserves another Nobel to go with her one for Literature.)

So, I've dialled back the over-protective, over-corrective impulses. When he scampered off recklessly from a crosswalk (and me) on Monday and landed in a heap after tripping on his feet, I just hoisted him up and comforted him until the tears ended. I held on and let the storm pass and we were both assured that he would live. Tonight, with his feet brown with dirt from an afternoon on the playground and him in no mood for a bath or shower (on consecutive days?!?!) I found the compromise of a ticklish footwash in the sink as he sat on the vanity counter. The novelty amused him and got the job done without undue battle over territory.

The yell, hopefully, will see its decline and disappearance. I'll be the tough nut to crack since it is a go-to in times of stress. It may not be the most reasonable expectation, it is a goal - especially when the dialogue has been already so valuable and illuminating with Gabriel when he's barely 5 1/2.

Onward.

Coaching

For Calgarians, soccer season is an eight week interval between the last icy gasp of winter and the start of summer holidays. This year, rather than subjecting us to the discomforts of standing against a brisk wind making us wish we had another layer of down, a blast of snow seized the first week of my son's U6 season outright rather than leaving any questions about how cold it might get before it was determined that the kids were better off with their normal, sedentary evening routines.

For week two, we congregated at the local community centre where nets are aligned in pairs across the soccer field and went through the routine of scanning the team app that we signed up for to determine who else was on our children's team and who the coach was. My son knew that he was on the same team as one of his closest friends from daycare and further to that I knew that among his teammates was the five-year-old most likely to do a 10-metre knee slide across the field with his shirt pulled over his head and beckon the crowd's complete adoration. I'm not kidding - it is the kind of thing that sticks in your head. Last year, this kid was the only one wearing cleats, and he showed up every week in an authentic Real Madrid kit complete with Ronaldo's or somebody's name and number. 

I scanned the roster on my phone and found the name of a "non-player" and as the queries about who was coaching mounted, a lean sixties-ish guy with a silver beard acknowledged his name and added that he thought he had made it clear that he said he wasn't available this year. Fortunately enough, he decided to come out to watch his grandson play and he would pitch in.  He turned to me and asked, "You know anything about soccer?"

"I've kicked a ball." I didn't bother to add that the last time I kicked a ball, about ten days earlier, my efforts redefined the word "errant" and left me humbly chasing my shot up the road to throw the ball back over the fence it sailed over. I played organized soccer up until I was 15 and I had played pick-up off and on. As for coaching, I knew that I would have to take turn at some point but I thought I oiled wait another year or so. I was going to definitely miss one week and that was enough for me to rationalize putting it off another year. I was not sure if I could muster the extroversion to elicit the excitement among the kids to play or get the focus for drills that I would expect myself to aim for despite it still being the time of, "Same team, same team!" and "When's snack time?"

I was ready to coach and pitch, though feeling a bit of stage fright about trying to drill them on things for the half hour of practice that preceded a loosely officiated game. Twelve hours after the fact, it has just dawned on me that .I could start them off with some stretching and that vaguely remembered game with the numbers or something. I don't even like stretching.

Instead of taking the pressure role of leading the kids in their early paces, I seized the opportunity to lay out the cones that separated the field into units for each of the four teams. I grew hesitant with each step as I acknowledged that nobody else was laying out cones for any of the other teams. A voice in my head chided me for not jumping in and taking the lead even though the current volunteer as coach was not too reluctant to accept the task that was thrust upon him.

"You go in net with these guys. Okay?"

I immediately started to wonder about how competitive I was going to be and with each save I wondered if I was going to hear the hue and cry of parents who would complain the game wasn't fair and that I ought to let the kids-only opposition score enough to keep it fair. I was a hockey goalie growing up and those same instincts took over quite quickly. Still, I made a point of letting a goal in early to put the other team ahead before knuckling down and stopping shots aggressively. I thought I was getting a sense of how our team was doing, but they did not score as much as I had thought. There was one little pocket rocket, with plastic shin pads the glimmered with a metallic blue sheen, who had pretty good speed and a good sense of footwork with the ball and he got some decent breakaways on me and scored a few. On a separate occasion, I pulled Gabriel aside to point out a crestfallen opponent who was taken aback by a push Gabriel delivered. As the ball hit the twine behind me, the coach gently chided, "You! Penalty for parenting."

Snack time followed and I was off the hook and managed to escape the wrath of parents who thought I was playing too hard or too well. Instead, the little pocket rocket came up to me and said, "I score three goals on you." He was cute and I liked the way he played, so I gave him a fist bump instead of replying, "Two. You scored TWO, kid." With that, I was off the hook for this week, but I suspect it will be time to dust off a stretching exercise and a few games to get them enjoying some drills.

Adding Each Thread

      My apologies for opening with a mind-blower but, I fear being wrong about love.
It is not a matter of misjudging the entire element (love) and its power. I trust it and recall frequently the occasions when my French-speaking grandmother, in halting English, would gather our attention to assert word with the reminder that it is above all things and that it will be an answer, a solution and your bedrock as well.

     With my grandmother as a reference the nuances or calibrations of love's expression dog me and leave doubts. There are my insistent doubts about my over-protective impulses. Even though my son, signalled to me, with a head-long dive off the sofa when he was barely able to hold himself in a seated position, that there would be a trip to the emergency room to set a broken bone in my future. Despite that, I still let a vigilant, perhaps paranoid, bark slip whenever he is straying into probably minor risks. The vigilance does not express that love as well as other ways available, at least not in the immediate term.  Beyond that there are, again, the nuances of the long-term consequences of that preemptive attention. It is probably better to let him get into trouble and learn his lessons the hard way - as long as they aren't hard lessons.
     Apart from the vigilance, I have come to realize not to presume adequacy in expressing myself to my son. There may be self-imposed limits that are hard-wired into me without my recognition. Conscious of the largesse that has come his way as the only child, grandchild, and nephew, I am wary of gifts and want to ensure that he truly appreciates what he receives as an expression of a friend's or relative's fondness for him and the value they give to the time they spend with him. Yesterday, a dear, older friend whom Gabriel and I regularly lunch with on Saturdays gave a smallish package in a large yellow envelope and was advised that it was something for him to share with his parents rather than open immediately.  On the way home, I thought it was best to modify Gabriel's expectations so I told him that the gift was our friend's way of expressing his affection and his appreciation for the time we spent together. When we arrived home, Gabriel asked if he could remove the package from my bag and open it.  Rather than being the keepsake or heirloom that I feared might turn Gabriel off or need some time to earn its value in his eyes, I turned out to be a package of four large chocolate chip cookies. Right in G's wheelhouse.
   Despite my amusement and relief that the gift was something tangible for a five-year-old, I am remain conscious of the value of our time together and prefer to give him that and share a variety of experiences with him that broaden the connections between us. One aspect of my fear about being wrong about love is the assumption that one connection or association would be enough for us. Whether it is the bedtime reading, the station-to-station sprints that are a part of our journeys, the drowsy chats about music as consciousness gives way (finally) to sleep, the work we do together or more, I still wonder what the next thing will be to connect us and create another link in the bond between us. I believe that relying on only one or a handful or the tried and true amongst those connections makes too much of an assumption about the adequacy of a connection. I do not want to presume one of those connections is a high tensile connection and learn much, much later that it was gossamer thin and inadequate for the task of preparing Gabriel for the rest of his life and assuring him that I have his back.
     The sheer abandon with which he delivers hugs and kisses and "I love you's" to those around him, me included, is reassuring but I do not want to settle for the possibility of creating a single tether between us, when a web can connect us and reassure me of a link to him as time passes and the bonds of certain books, for instance, are outgrown. The thing I am conscious of as he grows is the need to express my love of him and my value of him in a manner that grows and evolves as he matures and finds new ways to express his desires, his feelings and himself in a range of ways that are as articulate and varied as he needs.

Dad Still Has Work To Do... and a Chance

Monday mornings. Need I say more? For all the times that I might get a chuckle on this blog from a moment or an anecdote about Gabriel's personality, growing pains, experiences or various rates of progress, it is time for me to be transparent and fess up as well.

I had to leave home early for a meeting and Gabriel asked me if I could build some Lego. It was 6:30 am and maybe it was on me for scheduling a meeting so early but when Gabriel gave an exasperated sigh, I rose to the bait. I cited the attitude in the sigh, fed up with his early wake-ups and his refusal to do much constructive (eat breakfast or get dressed) when he did.

I immediately regretted and chided myself for not letting him get past his sigh and accept the disappointment of me not being available to spend the morning with him.  That may not have been possible but it would have been a lot better for me to let the sigh go and see if he could work his way past it.  Instead I showed him a lousy way of dealing with disappointment and instead of having the patience to show him a calm to model, I blew it.  It is going to take me that many more calms and detached occasions to absorb his frustrations and see him through to the other side and his own calm and perspective about his emotions and how to manage them.

You never know when the big moments are, but it is easy to acknowledge that patterns or constellations that snowball.  There is this sense of frustration and failure and when he rolls his eyes or empties his lungs with that sigh of exasperation, I have this anxiety that it is all slipping away -- that these moments are going to be the highlights he looks back upon most often; these will be the occasions that he struggles to unpack because he needs to work that much harder to make sense of them and find a positive sense of himself despite the other moments. I worry that he will look to define himself or find satisfaction in possessions and objects rather than strong relationships and good deeds. I worry that my efforts will set the stage for a tumultuous adolescence and more battles, little communication and sending Gabriel on a quest for a more tolerable male adult to hang out with.

Easy to blow it or blow it out of proportion, I just have to figure out which I'm doing.  Not that it would be impossible for me to do both at the same time or to create a vicious circle between those two things.  When I'm not bouncing back and forth between making a mess of things or panicking about screwing up the job, I'm trying to overload a moment with a maxim or life lesson. [sigh]

Today was an up and down day. Gabriel was tricky to get into gear and out the door in time for the commute to music class but once he was out the door, he fully committed to the word, "Boogie," and stayed in gear as we powered up the hill from our place to the train station. The bonding over our Saturday morning island between the train and the bus brought the day or the week back to the state that I would love for it to be at.  As I write this, I dread the occasion when Gabriel turns that routine down at, you know, that age. I tell myself that it will happen, more in an effort to brace myself for the possibility than a specific case of pessimism.  (I will cop to a broader, more general case of pessimism.)

The rest of the morning unfolded relatively well. Music class ended with him in a state of lethargy or restlessness and I'm trying to determine if it is boredom with a class that is going too slowly. Two days earlier, my wife and I were puzzling over what to do about music classes for Gabe, who at 18 months surprised me by identifying different arrangements and orchestrations of the same song, but now has lost interest in his Kodaly classes. An hour later, he was arranging coins on Nadine's iPad cover and telling us what notes the coins were.

Okay.

He has expressed boredom with the other part of the Saturday routine, pizza with friends of mine that he has been dragged to since the bucket phase, and I was content to set that aside for the day and get on top of a few chores that I had on the to-do list.  He was good with that and when the urge to get to the loo prompted a detour, we found ourselves sitting down for burgers for lunch. I was conscious of the battles I was losing -- his preference for condiments over the meal and his sudden unfounded affinity for salt on everything -- when an elderly man say next to us.  He indulged in Gabriel for a moment but settled in for his lunch and a brief reading of Jeremiah from his well-worn and post-itted (is that a word?) Bible.  After he finished reading he packed to go and stood between the tables to tell me how I was doing.

Basically, he said he had worked with a lot of parents who didn't know what they were doing and kids who were lost because of their parenting and added that Gabriel and I were great together. To be frank, I cowered at the compliment and wanted to defer it in every way possible.  I write this not in an effort to get a few more variations on, "No, no you're fine," but to give an insight into the discomfort I felt at such a compliment at the end of the week I've had. I turned to Gabriel to more or less tell him he didn't have to agree with that and he gave me a confident nod and a thumbs up. He is incredibly generous and far more forgiving than I am. Hopefully, he'll give me a better chance at this than I give myself.

For Small Work or Small Workers?

One of the things I enjoy about condominium living is the low upkeep.  No lawn mowing, no raking leaves or any of the yard work that I am quite content to steer my time away from.  At the same time, though, there is a whole raft of responsibilities and chores that The Lad manages to avoid as well.  He is starting to get more attentive about putting his dishes in the sink and dishwasher as required but the bigger chores seem to have been evaded so far.

Fortunately, he has no reluctance to help and if there is lifting to be done or work at his grandparents he is prompt to pitch in.  Today was a rare occasion when he had some work to do outside. After a decent-sized dump of snow, our parking stall required some attention before the end of the day and I started digging up the snow in the stall.  The one next to ours was vacant as well, so I took on the extra space and set about pushing the powder aside and blasting at the icier pack that was at the edges of the stall and threatened to leave our car and a distinct slant when it finally parked.  I took a break from that for a moment to assure a neighbour that the shovel I was using was the common one and beat a path so she could get her tiny Toyota Echo out of its stall and into the cookie dough of Calgary's streets.

When my wife came home at the end of the day with the Gabriel waving enthusiastically from the back seat, I knew I would have an assistant even though most of my work was done (and about to be covered by the parked car.)  Gabriel was eager to get some shovelling in and headed inside to get the smaller common shovel, which is, oddly enough, just his size.  He threw himself into his work on the vacant neighbouring stall as we cleared that out and with gas to burn after that, I turned our attention to the stall that the Echo had vacated a few moments earlier.  As dusk approached and fell, the clear skies brought a brilliance to the occasion that made the work and day feel much warmer than they were.  As we continued, I asked him to check with other people in the parking lot if they needed the shovels or needed some shovelling done, conscious of hogging the tools of ignorance to ourselves while other residents fought their way out.

We were good and free to carry on with our work.  There was even a moment when Gabriel enthusiastically shouted out, "Teamwork," with as deep a voice as a five-year-old can muster.  As darkness fell, he was undaunted and was eager to keep digging away wherever we could even though we had four stalls done at this point of the evening.  After a while, he complained that he had a pain in his back and I suggested that it was muscles that he was not accustomed to using.  He accepted my explanation despite a precocious skepticism about much that I say and continued on.  The offer of supper did not even ease his efforts.  He had a full head of steam and was in no mood to stop.

In the end, I hope there is a sense of connection with the people that he shovelled stalls for, even if the work goes unnoticed.  He spoke about the exercise he was getting, but I hoped that my message about helping the neighbours slipped past his skepticism as easily as the suggestion about the pain in his back being a sign of good work.  I'll wait and see.  In the meantime, I'm left to wonder if it is a coincidence that the second shovel is just his size.

The Same Boy

The question is already asked: "Where did the time go?"  Gabriel is only five now but the time has done what it intends to do.  I never quite get in the moment as often as I could or ought and I'm looking ahead, wondering what a particular bout of rebellion or rambunctiousness will amplify to when he is older and bigger and I am forever pondering the butterfly effect of a moment that got away: I'm impatient for a moment or inattentive and there is that erosion of the connection that sends him down a path that reflects so badly on me.  Robin Williams used to raise that self-doubt by contrasting two futures: one where is child is accepting a Nobel Prize and at the other extreme asking, "Do you want fries with that?"

There is probably no advantage in looking back rather than behind.  The ideal is to be in the moment and absorbing the opportunity as it is.  There are the easier moments that are still and captured. Looking at his awed, rapt face as it is bathed in the blue glow of the screen in a darkened theatre and he is transported and transfixed one of those few times (to date) that he has had the experience of a movie.  The uncertain but committed buy-in to the excitement of the first New Year's Eve he stayed up for.  There was the sense that this was a Big Deal, and he threw himself into it, but he was in no way certain why.  The tentativeness as he rushed to the video of the countdown was subtle, undeniable but amusing.

The routines are harder to get that stillness and contentment within.

A few days back, Friday, he and I were together for the day and there was little that I could interest him in doing out of the house.  All he really wanted to do was put together Lego and, to my surprise, he was not quite engaged enough in that to finish it all the way through.  He would recruit me for long stretches of the construction and it was more likely out of his disinterest in the task than a desire to include me in something other than sorting through the pieces for him.  He was not interested in any of the outings I've normally gotten him to leave home for and the lone exception, a trip to the playground was clearly scheduled for, "The middle of the afternoon."  No earlier.

When we finally got outside and headed to the playground, he dawdled and played in the snow, stopping regularly to kick and stomp at it wherever it captured his imagination more than the destination did.  After a few hours of cabin fever around the Lego, the delays in the walk taxed me a little.  After stretching the distance between us a few times and never prompting him to catch up, I managed, somehow, to flash back to the same walk years earlier -- I somehow make that sounds like decades, when it is just 2-3 years -- when he did the same thing, but was only able to call it, "No." He is the same boy.  I waited and watched as he Godzillaed a few mounds of snow to dust and moved on to the next.  When he finally caught up, I rested a hand on my head and reminded myself that he's the same boy. At the same time I suspected that this particular fascination with the snow would get buried in maturity and expressed differently, if at all, as he gets older.

At the playground there were reminders again. We were alone but he was untroubled by the solitude or the cold and he took to the same routines as in previous years.  The swing captivated him but he graduated out of the bucket and into the big swing.  I pushed him for 30-45 minutes as he struggled to pump himself into motion.  Godzilla was not able to crush the snow down sufficiently to give him the room his feet needed to pump.

In that rhythm, standing behind him and taking his guidance on how many hands to use and how hard to push, I ceased to look ahead or back and I just settled into the task of pushing him just right each time as the snow seeping into my shoes.

Game Time

I am always conscious of how much time I spend with Gabriel and how good that time is.  Still, I have a gag response to the term "q--l-ty time" that inhibits me from forcing the matter or parenthesizing a moment as one of intense purposeful bonding that I could close and discard. Instead I've contented myself with being there with him for walks to and from daycare; and books, whether read on the sofa, in bed or from the side of tub. Whenever I give into his request for TV I try to sit with him to avoid using it as the electronic babysitter. Invariably, though, I will gravitate toward the kitchen to prepare supper or tidy something up rather than zone out or silently critique as Gabriel makes the mental shopping list required for him to achieve his (apparent) goal of becoming a Paw Patrol completist.

Because of his attachment to TV time and my tendency to disengage when he's in front of the TV, I have grown conscious of that void in the day where we are out of touch with each other.  There will be programming at some point that we can connect over and talk about, but the programming for a five-year-old only prompts conversation if there is a nostalgic, "This is what I watched..." introduction to the likes of Friendly Giant or Mr. Dressup.

In the face of the void that TV imposes on the day, I've tried a few times over the last year to get him interested in board games.  The gathering around the table for a board game, cards or a jigsaw puzzle each is loaded with memories of family and place that is immensely evocative. I've tried quite a few times to interest Gabriel in a game and there have been a few lapsed-attention efforts at Snakes and Ladders and a few occasions where I've gotten Trouble out of the box but could not engage him in much more that the percussive sequence of crush-pop-rattle that was the "roll" of the dice.  His mastery of jigsaw puzzles, like that of Lego is set and it is easy for him to lock in on the challenge when it is in front of him, but that can leave me on the sidelines.

Last night, with a stint in front of the TV finished and him asking for more TV after supper, I attempted to get him to try Trouble and we finished two games.  Best of all, this morning he asked if we could play again.  He counted his turns properly and mastered the simple task of starting his count on the next space on the board rather than the one he was in.  Rules were grasped and followed.  They were tested at times to but it comes with the territory.  There will be many games to follow.  I'm recall my capability to play double solitaire when my grandmother at the lake when I was seven and ponder introducing Gabriel to war (the card game).  More games will appear after Trouble, in their rightful sequence: Sorry, Clue, and maybe we will, in time, aspire to Life, Monopoly and the board flipping etiquette of Risk (ok, maybe not that one.)  All things to look forward to for the laughter and small lessons that will come from them and the closer connection that will come from sitting face-to-face on the floor or at the table.

At a time when he is holding his own more and more in conversation and surprises with the turns of phrase or topics that he introduces it is good to discovery that a refuge in the week where we will slow down to connect face to face.  He is in the middle (or early stages) of a growth spurt that has turned him ravenous, cranky and drowsy at times over the last 5-6 weeks and it is one of the unnecessary-necessary reminders that this will blur by fast and that the bond will be challenged by friends with the lure of video games, suppers over at friends, after school activities where he'll be home later and the kitchen is nothing more than a transit point or a node of quick fuelling as lives diverge step by incremental step. There will be stolen conversations on the road but the first successful foray introducing the game habit will promise a stillness and trove of memories that we have not been able to form yet.  It is a comfort to see his growth be complemented by the capacity to sit through a game and finish it, not to mention dust himself off for the needed rematch.

By the way, if anyone has a green peg they can spare, let me know.

First Lullabye

We are at a moment where my son seems formed and less likely to present a revelation to us.  He will grow, but there is the feeling that for the next little while, there is little likelihood for surprise. According to what I have read about growth in children and the formation of their personalities, he is pretty much wired, as it were. At the age of 5, he is obsessed with Star Wars, Lego and Paw Patrol. His knack for completing complex Lego sets is prodigious.  Consequently, I have consigned my quiver of ironic jokes about pressuring him to go into Art school, because it now seems unlikely on the part of the budding engineer.  As he assembles Lego or completes puzzles, he shows a spatial ability that makes the completion of a 1300-piece set uneventful for him and an affinity or affection for those challenges that surpasses any tolerance for wrestling with a creative block.

He is big for his age. He loves to run with me and no walk is complete without him challenging me to a race over some distance.  As was the case as a newborn, he fights sleep even seconds after acknowledging he is tired or burrowed into us for the assurance that he will not be alone for his transit into the night. Books are both obsession and refuge and might still be ahead in the neck and neck race with the iPad for his attention. He is a poor sleeper and the nights are still punctuated by his dark AM requests to sleep with us. He continues to demonstrate a knack for music and has filed away a few favorite hooks and choruses that he will sing or dance to when the mood strikes.

He is still the same extroverted, affectionate kid he was when he was a budding candy striper visiting his grandfather in the hospital in early 2012. He left Tim Horton's yesterday only after giving a hug to an older gentleman who complimented him on his new interest in practicing his letters. Once again, mom and dad struggle with the dilemmas that come with having a child who is so open and trusting with strangers (most of the time.) In that is an example of the questions that lie ahead: will his affection and openness make him vulnerable to the overrated threats all parents dread or will they evolve into something that is supportive and nurturing to those around him.  Time and the forks in his road ahead will determine that but it is clear that he is on a path that will shape his affections rather than the more emotionally cautious route that I have followed.

But, last night, as my weary extrovert was giving into fatigue and the early stages of a stomach bug that ails him today, which I believe was his first "sick day" (albeit from daycare) I surprised myself. After a long reading session on the sofa, the floppy, fatigued, yet still sleep-resistant lad sprawled on the sofa rather than dragging himself to his room, which prompted me to utter, with the faintest hint of melody, "Little boy, little boy won't you lay your body down," the first of many lines from Paul Simon's "St. Judy's Comet" that summed up the moment.

I've found it a challenge to sing my son to sleep, never quite finding the precise melodic whisper something I could get the right volume and pitch on, words trapped and muffled in the throat rather than given their appropriate whisper.  I've usually delivered a burr or a hum of some sort that was only a half-hearted approximation.  Last night though I did the song justice and sang it out - except for the "make your famous daddy look so dumb" which is Mr. Simon's own private confession about his struggle with lullabyes.

The likelihood is that he will surprise my wife and I in some way and that there will be some discovery of character or timing that will catch me off guard as we go through the journey together. There will be times as well though when, I excavate some part of myself and surprise him and perhaps myself too as I retrace parts of myself that are dormant or buried under the detritus of (dubiously) adult preoccupations.  He'll have a revelation that I was a kid once or that there are sections of my path that can be retraced and shared with him as I tentatively unveil some forgotten or hidden aspects of myself.

On the Playground

My family lives in a condominium so we do not have a backyard to lay claim to as our own. Fortunately we are within 500 metres walking distance of three playgrounds and we regularly take advantage of those when Gabriel is restless and needs to get some burn for a while. It is quite easy for him to lose all track of time as he chases other kids around, make friends for the brief time that they share together and expand his abilities on the apparatus.  It is an interesting way to mark the passage of time as he progresses.

He still has a fondness for the toddler bucket swing, but he has limited his turns to about 10 minutes instead of an arm-aching sequence of an hour top off by a half-dozen additions of "two more minutes." He has graduated to the bigger swing and after getting a scrape or two - but thankfully not a faceplant - when he first ventured onto it this summer he is managing to pump his legs in time with the movement and I have more opportunity to sit back and observe.

Observing alone can be fraught with dilemmas. There was one occasion where I found myself observing him observing to older boys who were playing some game and inflicting some punishment on one another.  The smaller one of the two was consistently at a disadvantage and I winced when they started using the term "pole-dancing," but commenting on their behaviour or Gabriel's immobile curiosity was probably going to bring attention to the odd dynamic between the three of them. My interest and focus on them heightened when they invited Gabriel to play with them, some odd for of tag that required the one who was "it" to walk with his eyes closed on the playground equipment. Gabriel said he understood the game, but after a moment of unresponsiveness when the game started the older boys adjusted and integrated him into the game without much harm.

There is always the opportunity for Gabriel to get exposed to something "mature" when he is there and most recently it was a new acquaintance who was quite quick to issue the "double bird."  Gabriel did not seem to pick up on it or attribute any meaning despite the fervour with which it was issued. (Gabriel has stuck it out incidentally from time to time and despite an occasion a year ago when he earned a loud response to it when he did it at the Thanksgiving table, he still hasn't adopted regular intentional use of it... I think.)

I'm not always at a distance.  More often than not, I get roped into a game of tag with Gabriel and whoever else he has gotten to know during our visit and somehow these sessions of tag take more out of me than a 10K run.  It must be the stops and starts. Aside from that, there is always the requirement to spin the carousel for a while as kids climb up and down.

The toughest thing about the playground visits is when the convergence to make new friends results in an untimely parting and his own upset at being left alone.  It is one of the few times when I get the sense of the vulnerability that he feels at being alone and without kids his age nearby and always at the ready to play. Often the occasion makes it difficult to settle him down and it is hard to console him. The flipside of that, two weeks ago, was when Gabriel found himself spontaneously invited to a birthday party that was taking part at the playground.  I had a sense that the invite was not parentally endorsed and anticipated the painful awkwardness as Gabriel's status as an included friend would have quickly diminished in a furrow of confusion. The range of logistics covering grab bags and unreceived presents was going to test the goodwill of people I had never met before.  We had been at the playground for well over two hours and it was time to get some food into him.

The playground visits will continue, even through the winter months and there will be times when I will have to figure out how to maneuver myself and my son through the interactions that present themselves as he grows into more independence and new relationships. He will continue to give challenges to his acrophobic father and I'll even dare to climb what he climbs far easier than I.  I can also tell that he has my lack of upper body strength when he's on climbing apparatus.  It is hard to tell what comes each time we go there as the cast of playmates evolves, but each time I ask him to behave or come back to me to check on something or to head for home he comes back - the tether between us still solid for all of the influence and opportunity that emerge each time we go there.

Masculinity and the Post-Gift-Shop Meltdown

A few weeks ago a close friend, after relating a story about her father's stoicism, advised (or pleaded), "Please tell me you are not going to close off all your emotions, when you get older, okay?" I held my tongue. It was not that I was intent on avoiding emotional expression of any sort. It is more a matter of not knowing what is the right level, amount or timing of emotions to express. At the same time, there was concern that the request may have come too late. To an extent, Marshall McLuhan's adage about fish being the last to discover water may apply to my ability to discern what emotions to express honestly or what the cultural expectations are for men or perhaps distinguish it from what it used to be.  Last night I came across a New York Times article from earlier this year on the challenge of men becoming or remaining emotionally honest.

I could cite my tendency (ability?) to shed a tear when sitting in the dark screen-rapt solitude of a movie theatre or how certain music in my possession can essentially take me out of commission for a couple of hours, but that is not evidence of emotional openness or honesty. My response to those inputs and in other instances my ability to articulate a response to something does not necessarily ensure ongoing emotional honesty as a man. There have been times when I have muted or walled-up my emotions out of a sense of propriety or a sense of preserving a decorum, but it is hard to determine what pressures or pain points I was giving into when closing myself off. Those cautions have made me wonder if a mode of communication has gone unpracticed, however, and left me wondering if I would be prepared to speaking openly and conscious enough of my intuitions when someone dear or important to me needs to hear what I have to say while I'm thinking it would be off-base or inappropriate.

With the question how emotionally honest I am in my thoughts and the New York Times piece opening with the account of a father's insistence that his toddler son tough it out through his vaccinations until the child seems to be transformed for the worse into an emotion-oppressing he, I have to take pause and wonder if I'm doing the same as this father in my own way.  That induction into masculinity, with all of its rigour to mute sensitivities and don a "masculine" facade is something I cannot pull off, was something that I dreaded for so long that I can recall saying around a campfire twenty-two years ago that I dreaded the possibility of being father to a son.  I sensed or hoped that being a father to a daughter may have given me better odds at asserting influence on masculinity.  Playing a protective role and gradually providing the model that a daughter would seek in a future husband seemed to have better odds than trying to steer a lad through that minefield of masculine BS.

I recall holding out the hope that Gabriel would be a more sensitive and reflective lad but laughed at the moment he dashed that notion.  He propped up next to me on the sofa one afternoon as a few-month-old and suddenly launched himself head-first to the floor.  This little guy was going to be getting scrapes and scratches, bruises and boo-boos and lots of them. The chatty, heartbreaking extrovert was going to be leading me into new territory.

Gabriel has had his share of tears, on occasions when a band-aid will ease the day, but there are more occasions when he is not getting something he wants. If he doesn't get something he wants he will cry (popcorn, Lego, more TV...) and he does not take our "no's" very well.  We are not quite inclined to put a stop to those tears, but we do want to make it clear that those occasions are not going to be won be waterworks and sobs. We are conscious of spoiling him and would not want to let his tears earn a harvest of things that he doesn't really need to have.

I realize though that there are too many occasions when I try to control a situation when his emotions are strongest and that my impulse is to find the more expedient route and get him into bed, or get on with the next part of the day without dawdling over whatever mood or curiosity has taken him off course.

Today on holidays, the closing ample through the gift shop did just what it was supposed to do and the emotionally honest thing might have been to shake my fist at the owner-operators of the Enchanted Forest with abandon for their cynical eye for harvesting the pockets of parents with the crap they have for sale. (I digress...) By the time we got out of the gift shop (fist shake again), Gabriel was intent on having popcorn at whatever expense. We told him no. The lesson I learned today was not to simply say no and let him know that he's been good and that we are not punishing him, but simply that the popcorn is not the thing for him on an empty stomach.  The remaining walk to the car was one of great resistance as the lad simmered over and peaked with him slamming the door open into his mother. Dad the Expedient intervened with a grab of the arm and things boiled over.

With the article in mind, I knew this was not the time to tell him the tears were not going to get him anywhere. At this point, the emotions were too countless to sort through: anger, guilt, pain, hunger and a sense of being denied what he thought he deserved.  I pulled myself together after realizing that he was not going to sort through all of those and articulate his understanding of what happened or what his motivations were.  We sat down in the grass for a few minutes and he cried himself out. As he calmed down I tried to help him sort out what he was going through and what he was feeling. For him, the popcorn was still the priority, something that makes me think that we need to work through the challenges of dealing with his guilt and taking responsibilities for what he did out of anger. Perhaps, in good time, a little more practice and the assurance that the truth will not always lead to unwelcome consequences we will help Gabriel ensure the widest possible range of emotions comes out as they are required.

We'll sort it out.

Three-Wheel Metaphor

In my own case, riding a bike began the spring I was seven. A green bike glimmered in the backyard when I returned home from catechism on a Saturday morning, its banana seat and the high Harley-style handlebars of the era the clear features of that vehicle.  That year there were no strider bikes or trailer bikes and this bike offer training wheels either.  I rode and fell, rode and fell and even rode and spared myself a scrape or two by getting my feet off the pedals and to the ground before an elbow or knee met its fate with gravity. Looking back it seems like it was the whole summer but in reality it may have only been a few days and I was getting into trouble for venturing out of the backyard and into the tentative residential traffic of Courtney Road.

Forty-plus years later, Gabriel is starting earlier than I had. He has already had a spin or two on a strider bike (although I'm more proud of his ability to out-run a kid using a strider in the playground this past "winter") but the bike has never really come up on his radar yet and he hasn't pleaded for bike time yet. However, this summer will be the one that we remember for the trailer bike. On Father's Day my wife and I had out mountain bikes fixed after being abandoned to the storage room after one or two spins in 2008 or 9. The plan was to get back out there and introduce Gabriel to riding via a trailer bike that friends were handing down since their daughter had graduated to her own mountain bike.

After picking up the bikes and walking them home, I learned that the trailer had incidentally been offered to someone else. (I can't recall if we were asleep at the switch or if the bikes was offered spontaneously.) A week later, the trailer was back on its way to us and we were quite self-conscious about how it ended up back on its way to our possession. I worried that there was a confession and a request for return. The first rumour that made its way to us was that the child it was intended for did not adapt to the trailer and that it was willingly returned. The actually story was that our friends' daughter reclaimed the bike with a from-the-mouths-of-babes announcement of the original plans for the trailer bike.

All that build-up was beside the point, however. Gabriel has taken to the trailer bike with great enthusiasm and little risk of bruise or scrape thus far. He has enjoyed his rides from the trailer regularly announces from his rumble seat position that it is the greatest thing ever.

The front position, for me at least, has felt more challenging. The addition of about 60 pounds of lad and trailer make the manoevering of the bikes a bit more uncertain. Turns require more thought and calculation to ensure that things go smoothly and I don't spill the lad to the street. Inclines and stops pose their challenges too, and there is the sense of impending lurch that makes me conscious of how close we are to oncoming traffic.

All of this occurring while every move and tweak in the seat behind me is transmitted to me by the aluminum tether that binds us. It is a little nerve wracking to feel that shift in weight behind me and not know what the lad is doing to cause it. I was never sure how well he was balanced behind me. As each wobble came through me, I tried to compensate with my weight and experience to keep things steady. There were times when his curiosity prompted him to look away rather than keep his eyes focused ahead. There were others when he was standing on his pedals or had his elbows on the handlebars instead of his hands. Each of these challenged me to steady myself and assert the calm and balance to get us through and keep us straight and safe.

When he was doing something that made things unsteady -- as he tried to find his balance and shore up his wavering attention span -- as we proceeded forward I gave into the urge to admonish him for the imbalance I was feeling. I wasn't always sure what it was he was doing and there were times when I yelled without know what he was actually up to. By the end of the first ride, I realized that it was best to keep steady and provide the balance and example he needed while he sorted himself out and learned what he needed so that he could strike out on his own without me able to worry about him from my seat with the incomplete view.

That about sums it up, doesn't it?